When they're out in the field, biologists often skin the animals they gather right then and there. But when people bring in dead animals to the museum -- roadkill rabbits, washed up sea turtles, and unfinished samples from the field -- they go to what's known as the preparation lab. There, museum scientists transform roadkill into research subjects, readying them to join the 640,000 other specimens in the collection of the Museum of Vertabrate Zoology.
The graphic content has to do with brain juice and all the rest - nothing the FCC would care about, but not something everyone would want to hear while eating eggs in the morning.
I left my SOC on - but it's in the clear. An easy trim.
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Piece Description
When they're out in the field, biologists often skin the animals they gather right then and there. But when people bring in dead animals to the museum -- roadkill rabbits, washed up sea turtles, and unfinished samples from the field -- they go to what's known as the preparation lab. There, museum scientists transform roadkill into research subjects, readying them to join the 640,000 other specimens in the collection of the Museum of Vertabrate Zoology. The graphic content has to do with brain juice and all the rest - nothing the FCC would care about, but not something everyone would want to hear while eating eggs in the morning. I left my SOC on - but it's in the clear. An easy trim.
Broadcast History
Posted on the California Magazine website.
Related Website
John Biewen
Posted on November 05, 2006 at 06:29 PM | Permalink
Review of Under the skin at the Museum of Verterbrate Zoology
This piece is filled with moments of description that, um, appeal to the senses, and all of them. Dried chipmunk carcasses hanging "like beef jerky." A meal of beaver (cooked with beer and worcester sauce) that tastes like swiss steak, not chicken. The peeling off of a chipmunk's skin "like taking off a sweater." Mix in flesh-eating beatles, "brain juice," and the smells of death so powerful they cling to clothes and skin, and you're likely to find yourself engaged and entertained, as I was, or lunging for the off switch.
I suspect many stations will find the piece too long. But if you've got space for a good, meandering science feature that mentions maggots and bloated bodies and brain juice, this is the piece for you.